Anyone interested in chatting about wildlife in the city/town/country?

[tomorrowalready]

On the back of discussing what wildlife cats catch, I'm pondering just how much wildlife I have seen since moving to the second biggest city in UK as opposed to how little I saw when I lived firstly in the country and then a small town as a child. Eg, never saw a wild fox close up until lived in a flat 1 mile from Spaghetti Junction with an old orchard where I sat with a vixen and 4 cubs playing less than a foot from me. Foxes, Squirrels and bats in the garden here so commonplace now, never saw them as a child. Coup de Brock- saw a large live badger emerge from neighbours hedge late this summer, had never seen a live one in 60 + years. It is a very green tree-ridden place here even though on one of the main roads out of the city. But is it now more common to have close encounters of the wildlife kind in town or country?

Local stream has the invasive American crayfish. I’m going to get a licence next year to catch some.

A lot of the animals/birds mentioned shouldn’t really be here. Mink and we get dozens of pheasants (local shoots). At least they taste nice!

I was less than a year old when my Dad shot the bear. It was right outside our trailer. He shot it because there were lots of small children in the camp and the bear was hanging about.

Dad never hunted for trophies etc. i think that was his only conquest. I believe they buried it.

The camp was in the wilderness and they were building forestry roads.

I have never smelled anything from a bear.

Skunks on the other hand yuck. The smell is disgusting. I think they might release more if they are threatened.

They used to go down the side of our house where our bedroom window was. The smell can wake you from a deep sleep. DH hates it.

I once saw two baby skunks in my garden playing and wrestling. They were letting off little puffs of scent. Cute.

It smells truly awful. Some marijuana has a similar smell but not as strong. I smell it in our local green space as people smoke pot (legal here) there.

As far as invasive species, we have some too. But if they are not too destructive of habitat I tend to just think of earthworms and bees, which I have read were invasive.

I know about the grey/red squirrel problem in England.

Thanks for the thread and letting me blather on OP!

We live rurally and see almost daily a barn owl and a tawny owl from our house. We have roe & muntjac deer we watch from our back window and if it’s really cold and icy they come into our neighbours unfenced garden looking for food. One lives in the hedge in the field next door. We have a few pheasant and they roost on our fence in the depths of winter and I feed them a little in January/February. Never seen a live badger where we live now but sadly there was a deceased one on the road 50ms down in summer 2020. Seenna few foxes in the fields too when I walk my dogs at dawn in spring/summer. Although rural it’s a village on a main road. We have a plentiful variety of birds, grey squirrel, along with a sparrow hawk, kestrel and buzzards who are seen most days from our windows and garden. Heron, swans and geese fly by a fair amount too. Hares and sadly lots of hate coursers too. Last 2 years I have seen red kite but not regular, they are regulars not to far away. Not seen any hedgehogs but have heard them and believe we had one in our garden at some point over the summer. Love watching the wildlife, helping where I can too. The barn owl is amazing to watch they work so hard and seem very unphased by people & machinery. The tawny is very noisy and difficult to see. Roe deer are much more twitchy than muntjac.

@LoveFall, No thanks for giving such a great insight into wildlife in another country. I looked up Shuswap Lake and interested to see some claim it has a 'monster' like Loch Ness. Maybe it is a nuiversal theme with deep lakes? Or maybe it is true? After all the seas and rivers are full of the weirdest creatures. after what you wrote about the smell of skunks, I would definitely keep a good distance. My neighbours (very close in distance) smoke a lot and I hate the stink, it is quite commonplace here to smell it on people in the street, shop or bus although not legalised. Funnily enough watching another TV programme about searching for snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan and the presenters are sniffing tree trunks for their markings, not unpleasant he says, uugh says the female director!

I think red squirrels are now confined to areas of the Wirral (North West), North East England and areas of Scotland, never seen one myself.

@EcoCustard what you say about not seeing so mnay live badgers and foxes rurally seems to bear out the experience of those of us in urban areas who are seeing them more and more. As I said I never saw a wide variety as achild and I was out a lot, have been wondering if that might have been due to the greater use of the more poisinous fertilisers by farmers in the 1970s. I know they nearly wiped out the red kite.

West Oxfordshire here..small town. I often see the fox that lives in the school grounds a few doors away, the odd hedgehog (I put out cat food for him) and there are loads of Muntjac deer here that trot across the housing estates at night.
A few days ago I watched a barn owl swoop down and take a mouse while I was walking the dog. Loads of Red Kites and they can be quite noisy!
And as for the bloody suicidal pheasants.. God knows how my car isn't splattered with them..driving up any lane here involves trying not to squash them!

I have buzzards and sometimes a pair of Red Kites come hunting. They are definitely the apex predators. Lots of squirrels and rabbits out of the back. We have the odd pheasant.

I saw a fox running into a side street in the middle of Nottingham the other week. I’ve never actually seen one in the countryside, it’s always been in suburban surroundings